Evergrande Taobao Files for China IPO in Asian First

Evergrande Taobao F.C., the soccer team co-owned by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and the property developer Evergrande Real Estate Group, could become Asia’s first listed club following its application for an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong earlier this week.

The team, which recently signed Brazil's FIFA World Cup-winning coach Luiz Felipe Scolari and midfielder Paulinho, filed with the National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ) to list under the "New Third Board," Evergrande said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday.

The company did not disclose the size of the planned listing, which is pending approval by the NEEQ.

Evergrande Taobao is estimated to be valued at around 10 billion yuan ($1.61 billion), which is smaller than the U.K. soccer powerhouse Manchester United's nearly $3 billion market capitalization, but much higher than more traditionally publicly listed teams such as Italy's Juventus F.C. and Borussia Dortmund in Germany, Reuters reported on Friday.

Evergrande, which currently owns 60 percent of the team, intends not to sell any of its shares in the offering, the company said in a statement. Alibaba, which owns the remainder, declined to comment on the club's listing plans.

Based in a 50,000-seat stadium in Guangzhou, Evergrande Taobao won the AFC Champions League in 2013 and the Chinese Super League in 2014.

China introduced a sweeping plan in March to reform soccer, a sport that has been tainted with corruption and poor results in international matches, including increasing the number of elementary and middle-school soccer programs from 5,000 to 50,000 in 2025 and terminating the relationship between the government body overseeing sport in the country and the Chinese Football Association, China's national soccer body.

Listing a club would be one way of improving transparency, as entities are obliged to disclose financial details to investors, CNBC said in a report on Friday.